Félicité, Alain Gomis (2017)

Nikolaus Perneczky

The film’s stubborn and tight-lipped lead (radiant: Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu); the raw urgency of its narrative premise; the physical, close-contact camerawork by cinematographer Céline Bozon, clinging to Félicité as she makes her way through a vibrant and violent Kinshasa on her increasingly desperate search for money to pay for her son’s operation after a motorcycle accident: basic components straight out of the Dardennes playbook.

 But Alain Gomis’ Félicité is also a love story, and a journey into the spirit realm. Time and again, the film’s harsh realism, firmly anchored in this world, opens onto another. From the bustling streets of the Congolese capital we’re whisked to a lakeside clearing in the middle of the woods, a space of limbo at the limit of visibility, wrapped in darkness and silence, and illuminated only by the light of the moon.

 The soundtrack to these otherworldly excursions is borrowed from arthouse favourite Arvo Pärt and performed by the Symphony Orchestra of Kinshasa – in a rehearsal room that is very much part of the film’s storyworld at first and only afterwards as disembodied (acousmatic) score, ‘localising’ Pärt, as it were. Still, his over-used brand of “holy minimalism” stands in stark contrast to the fresh and positively luminous performances by the Kasai Allstars: Members of the Congolese musical collective appear as themselves in the film, with Félicité as their lead singer.

 The extended scenes in the cramped, tubular bar where they play their nightly gigs are just as dark, and just as magical, as the film’s forays into mystical territory. It’s a liminal space, straddling the two worlds of Félicité; its darkness and music open the door to the other side. It is also here that Félicité first encounters Tabu (Papi Mpaka), a cocky and bumbling mountain of a man, who crosses her single-minded course. He’s so big his gravitational pull rivals that of her worldly troubles. “The stars are tiny to me”, he boasts.

 Félicité, we learn later, died as a child but lived again. Her parents, wanting to show gratitude for this miracle, gave her a new name, which means “happiness”. Halfway into the film, the Dardennes premise begins to unravel, transmuting into something else. Something hard to pin down, neither despair nor happiness. It’s to the film’s great credit that it never tries to square the two. There’s constant movement from one to the other but no redemptive horizon bounding the ongoing struggle of existence, no moment of grace to right all wrongs, however momentarily.

 The fierce, driven Félicité never says thank you, and she hardly ever smiles. When she finally does, it’s as beautiful and moving as you’d expect. But it doesn’t solve a thing.